GIA Develops Synthetic Diamond Detector

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GIA Develops Synthetic Diamond Detector

GIA has developed a much-needed machine to help detect if a diamond is natural, or possibly lab grown or treated. With the increase in synthetic (man-made, lab-grown) diamonds in the market place, some of which are going unidentified, this is good news.

The instrument is called DiamondCheck, and uses stereoscopy in combination with recently developed GIA software that interprets the data. So when a stone is put into the machine, it will tell the user one of three results

“natural and untreated”

“not diamond”

“further testing [is] needed to determine treatment or synthesis”

Unfortunately, GIA also makes it clear that this is not the long-sought-after “black box” that easily detects synthetics. It is not fully automated and requires an operator to install the stone. However, it is designed to be user-friendly, and you don’t have to be an expert in stereoscopy to use it.

My Comments ::

This is much needed, since synthetics are starting to flood the market undetected in the past couple years. Unscrupulous dealers are mixing them with natural stones, or selling whole parcels of synthetics as natural diamonds. Such stones should be disclosed as synthetics, and they should sell for less than their naturally-occurring counterparts. Having tools to detect them easily is critical, and we hope to see more about this asap. So far, they are too expensive for consumers to use, at $23,000 each, but in time, I am sure other machines or methods will follow soon.